So, uh, I originally meant to have this fic up in December, but I am the slowest. So yes. Yet another Walter survives WWI fic! Because I can, and because I have a Very Elaborate Headcanon involving all of this that I thought I'd try to write out, at least a bit.

A few notes: On the amount of research that I did, I will quote daniellafromage from Livejournal: "More than some, less than she should have." Because on the one hand: accuracy is a good thing. On the other: I'm not getting paid for this, and it's almost finals week. So. My apologies for any mistakes or general WTF-ery. Also, this is the first chapter fic I've done since I was about twelve (Lord), so apologies for any weirdness that lies there.

I'm going to try to get on a regular updating schedule for this; hopefully I'll have a new chapter up every Friday, or every other Friday if I fall behind. But, um, don't hold me to that.

I think the title of the fic is general enough not to need credit, but I did get it from the song "Hangover Payback" by MAA. And the title of this chapter is from "Lucky" by Bif Naked.

prologue: we are the lucky ones

He wakes up away from the front lines, in a field hospital full of warmth and voices - so many voices. Not shouts like in the trenches; only murmurs and whispers, the occasional groan of men in pain. How long has it been since he heard someone murmur? It seems like all he can recall is screaming, orders barked across the lines and then anguished cries as friends and comrades died around him. There's a quiet hum of activity around him, buzzing like the flies that surrounded the dead in the trenches.

"You're awake."

The nurse is young and lovely, with a lilting accent and sweet, hopeful eyes. Walter is sure he's seen her on a propaganda poster somewhere, urging him to fight for the lands that bore daughters like her. Are German girls this lovely? He almost laughs. As if the bloom of youth and optimism can only be confined to one empire. They're not so different. That's what he's learned.

He cannot move, not really. He tries to recall, but finds that it's all a blur - a haze of shells and fire and ducking behind sandbags - and then the gas. The scrambling for their masks and he'd gotten his on in time (hadn't he?) but he'd torn his jacket a week ago, yes, this he remembers, and the words of his commanders, the gas will get at any uncovered skin, so be sure to patch up -

Ah.

The burns will heal, the medic tells him. He'll never be quite comfortable again, but soon it will not hurt so much to move his arms or turn his body.

His leg is another matter. He'd been hit by a shell - or two - they tell him, in the thigh (there's an artery there, a big one, and the largest bone in the body, Walter remembers from his father's books and Jem's doctor talk). This Walter does not remember - it must have happened after he'd passed out.

He will walk again, in a manner of speaking - they show him pictures of survivors, men standing with their canes and crutches, gripping them like old Elder Clow back home - ancient before their time. But it is not this that worries Walter. It is their faces, their eyes, empty and staring at something only they can see. Does he look like that now?

Lucky, they say. Lucky to be burned and bent, twenty-three and hobbled like an old man. Walter understands, in a way. He nods his head as if he agrees.

His days settle into a pattern. They change his bandages, stitch and re-stitch his leg, clean his wounds. They're not quite quick enough - infection settles in, and Walter loses another month to fires and pain and the certainty that this time, he will die.

He does not.

On his skin, the burns blister, then settle. Walter learns how to angle his body when he sleeps, so as not to put pressure on the burns on his back.

His family has been notified and he receives letters by the bundle. They are kind and warm and full of sympathy. Walter is glad for them, but somehow - they do not touch him. The once-familiar feeling of his soul being filled by beautiful words or images or sounds doesn't come. It is as though he is holding his own emotions at arm's length.

But he cannot tell them that, so he writes back, trying to recall how he used to talk, what the Walter-that-was would say.

The pretty nurse brings him their responses and lightly jokes about the volume of mail, but Walter cannot bring himself to appreciate her beauty or her sweetness.

The wounds slowly heal. Some of them, at least.

1917 comes and scar tissue forms. They send him to a hospital, a real one in a building with walls and floors, to make way in the field tent for more groaning, injured men.

He learns to walk with a cane, learns to tread without slamming it down onto the floor when he forgets and tries to use a leg that is useless. Some of the other men arrange races, tottering down the hallways, laughing through their bitterness. Walter even wins one, once, and for a moment he feels just a bit lighter.

Sometimes they go out together, in a group - safety in numbers. It's easier, this way, to pretend that the stares aren't directed at one of them, individually - Hartley and his missing arm, Macdonald with his eyepatch, Burrows's smile twisted at the corner by a scar that slices down his face, Blythe with his cane and shiny, burn-scarred skin peeking out above his collar.

Sometimes they talk, sometimes they play cards or football (this Walter can only watch), and he almost forgets. Then he has to go back to his hospital bed and receive his inspections, and it all comes back.

He'll have to stay here forever, he thinks. No one will ever want to play cards with him again except these other soldiers, just as damaged as he is. They'll all just have to live together, a house of the ruined.

He's almost reconciled to the idea when they tell him that he is to be released. Not fully healed, but out of danger, they say, as though they never hear the shouts and weeping of the men in the night. But he is not going back to the front, able-bodied as he no longer is. No, he is going home.

"Lucky bastard," murmurs Burrows, whose ruined visage is nevertheless still capable of sight, speech, and hearing, so back to France he will be going.

Lucky. Walter tries to believe it.